Editor-At-Large: Come and get me, Anne, if you think you're hard enough

Digital discount

A happy new year to you all, and in keeping with tradition, may I offer the unique Street-Porter detox regime to flush out unwanted pollutants and start 2003 mentally and physically cleansed and ready to meet the challenges ahead? Dredging through the festive television on offer over the past two weeks, our normal critical standards

obviously dropped. Like me, many of you would have been slumped over a vast array of tangerines, assorted nuts, large tins of Quality Street, and nougat, digesting large turkey pies and platters of cheese. In our semi-comatose state, it's been easy to tolerate "entertainment" that wouldn't normally warrant five minutes of our attention. Why do French and Saunders, for example, think that spending thousands of pounds on costumes, wigs and make-up to mimic Tipping the Velvet or Monarch of the Glen is any substitute for a script with real jokes in it? Do these two once-savvy women do anything these days except watch television? If you have a life, be it playing in a brass band, or attending domino drives, you wouldn't have a clue as to what they are talking about. It was television obsessed with itself.

The key to my detox regime lies in the surprise hit of the season (pardon the pun), the Gervais vs Bovey boxing match. Suddenly, chubby Ricky, he of the tiny feet and thinning hair, was in a gym being trained by two cockneys who swore more than I do, screaming at him to get his act together and face up to the fact that in order to win he was going to have to beat the hell out of someone. Nimble footwork wasn't enough. Creepy Grant, with his blond highlights and suspiciously hair-free chest, seemed more worried about disturbing his cosmetic dental work than landing killer punches. His trainer, former European featherweight champion Jim McDonnell, came up with sit-ups so cruel I realised there is a God, and this was when He had decided to punish Mr Bovey for leaving his wife and children for Anthea Turner (a woman so perfect she looks as if she has just emerged from a plastic dry-cleaner's bag), as well as flogging pictures of the two of them eating a chocolate bar, to pay for their wedding. The match itself, three rounds of 90 seconds, was about the only raw excitement available on the BBC, unless you count a brief glimpse of a large black dog on The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Five million viewers tuned in to see Ricky beat Grant by one point. Blood was spilled and the audience roared with delight. It's cheap programming, and the £5,000 prize has been donated to Macmillan Nurses, so everyone's happy, except the strange group of men who run professional boxing in Britain, who claim events like this bring the sport into disrepute. I'll pause now for you to laugh uncontrollably. It might be the 21st-century version of gladiatorial combat, mindless fodder for the masses, but I'm not complaining. Compared to reality television such as Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity..., this is inspiring stuff.

So, I urge you to forget yoga (so last year) and start training now. What better way to lose weight, forget stress, and focus on yourself and all your positive attributes? The trend started when Bob Mortimer beat Les Dennis on television for Sport Relief. Now, regular dinner events are being held in which total strangers (generally City traders) fight for three rounds of two minutes, paying money in order to do so. The BBC is planning more celebrity contests, and investigative reporter Donal McIntyre is lined up against Darren Day.

May I offer myself as the first female contestant (surely women are not going to be denied this opportunity) in the ring? I have compiled a list of opponents I visualise as I jog up the road and practise my upper-cuts; Anne Robinson, for starters, although that would be like bashing an Issey Miyake-clad Twiglet, Sara Cox, as I'd like to demonstrate that drinking beer doesn't make you hip, and Jerry Hall, who is still under the delusion that she can act, and is some kind of role model for women over 45. If there is one pollutant I aim to rid from my life in 2003, it's women dishing out advice to other women, from Alex Shulman, the editor of Vogue (who pens a gormless what-to-wear column in the Daily Telegraph), to Mariella Frostrup (now morphed into a poetry expert and agony aunt for The Observer) and Theresa May – she can't help adopting a district nurse tone of voice at every opportunity. I keep expecting her to whip out a syringe or a bed pan and shove it in the direction of the interviewer's bottom. Line them up, I've stopped drinking, started training, and will donate my £5,000 prize towards the setting up of centres for women sick of being told what to wear, what to eat and what to read. They're going to be called Drop In and Blob Out and will feature squashy sofas, boxes of chocolates and free tracksuits and slippers.

Digital discount

Meanwhile, a series of irritating commercials on BBC television urges us to tune in to its new digital radio station, BBC7. Here in Upper Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, this is a sick joke. My village is full of old people who would like nothing better in all this rain and sleet than to tune in to a speech-based station featuring hours of classic comedy and drama every day. So would I. But we can't even receive decent analogue coverage of Radio 3 and 4. I log on to the website and discover that Radio 7 is available via a digital radio (no good) digital Freeview Television (ditto), cable television (ditto) or satellite (installation plus about £38 a month).

I know the BBC will tell me 65 per cent of the country can receive digital radio. Sure, but that is the over-served masses living in conurbations. As digital coverage unrolls, surely the underserved rural population is due some kind of licence fee reduction. Or stop plaguing us with ads for something we can't enjoy, and don't expect pensioners to pay for Sky.

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The story of the young mother who was told to catch a train to London from Brighton seven hours after the birth of her baby makes distressing reading. Her child, born with a heart defect, was rushed by ambulance to Guy's Hospital in London, for an emergency operation, but no place in the vehicle was available for the mother. The midwife suggested that she travel to Guy's on public transport. She arrived in London bleeding and with high blood pressure. Now the Royal Sussex Hospital has apologised, and recognised that its young midwife's advice was "not appropriate". But there's no question of the person involved being sacked or reprimanded. In our blame-free society, where children routinely die as a result of social-service inadequacies, it seems an "apology" is enough. My nephew was admitted to Portsmouth hospital late last year and not seen by a doctor for four days, after being told by casualty that he was suffering from Crohn's disease. He was shunted to three different wards over one weekend, and only after I telephoned was he seen by a doctor. My sister has received an "apology". My nephew was discharged, without any diet sheets or advice about how to cope with an illness that is directly affected by what you eat. A good job he can use the internet.